RESEARCH ARTICLE

"Junk Food" and "Healthy Food": Meanings of

Food in Adolescent Women's Culture

GWEN CHAPMAN AND HEATHER MACLEAN 1

School of Family and Nutritional Sciences, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver,

British Columbia V6T lZ4; and lDepartment of Nutritional Sciences, Faculty of Medicine,

The University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S lA8

ABSTRACT A qualitative research project was conducted to examine the meanings of foods within adolescent female culture by looking at ways in which young women classifY and use foods. Ninety-three young women ages 11 to 18 partici­pated in semi-structured individual interviews or small group discussions in which they talked about what, where, and with whom they ate. The main food classification scheme that emerged from the data analysis was the dichotomization of foods into two groups: "healthy foods" and "junk foods". The study participants agreed on the core foods and common characteristics of foods in each group. They associated con­sumption of junk food with, among other things, weight gain, pleasure, friends, independence, and guilt, while consumption of healthy food was associated with weight loss, parents, and being at home. Through these associations, the food-meaning system relates to issues of adolescent development such as the maturation of relationships with family and friends, and societal pressures on women to be thin. Appreciation of meanings given to different foods within adolescent women's culture and the links between these meanings and social and developmental issues may help nutrition educators in designing intervention programs for this age group.

UNE 25:108-113,1993)

INTRODUCTION

The eating habits of adolescent women is a topic of concern to many researchers. Diet surveys consistently show young women in North America and Britain to have low intakes of energy and some micronutrients, most notably iron and calcium, as well as excess intakes of fat and sugar. Unfortu­nately, while recent nutrition education efforts have had some success in increasing young women's nutrition knowl­edge, significant changes in their eating behaviors have been

Address for correspondence: Gwen Chapman. Ph.D .• School of Family and Nutri­tional Sciences, The University of British Columbia, 2205 East Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T lZ4; (604) 822-6874. "'1993 SOCIETY FOR NUTRITION EDUCATION

108

less apparent, resulting in a growing awareness among nutritionists of the need for a better understanding of the factors that shape adolescent women's eating habits (1-3).

Parraga (4) has presented a model that describes food consumption as arising from the interaction of biological, ecological, and sociocultural environments. Cultural deter­minants, such as the values and symbolic meanings people attach to food, are key components of the model that have traditionally received little attention from nutrition re­searchers. Social anthropologists have provided descriptions of the meanings attributed to food in various cultures and the relationship of those meanings to social forces (5), but no reported studies have examined the shared cultural knowledge currently shaping adolescent women's eating patterns. Comprehension of this set of influences on young women's food practices and concerns should aid nutrition educators in the development of intervention programs aimed at this group.

The study described in this paper was designed to explore the meanings of foods within adolescent female culture. Such meanings can be revealed through an examination of the ways in which members of a culture categorize foods, their descriptions of the characteristics of foods in each group, and the ways in which foods from each group are used (6). The major food classification scheme that emerged from interviews with adolescent women in Toronto will be described in this paper.

METHODS

Qualitative methods were chosen for the study, as this approach is well suited to the examination of cultural meaning systems (6-8). Developed primarily in social sci­ences such as anthropology and sociology, qualitative meth­odology generally involves assumptions about human behavior that explain behavior as shaped by the context in which it occurs and as mediated by the meanings it has for those involved. Because such meanings are formed through

Journal of Nutrition Education Volume 25 Number 3

interaction with others, people who share the same envi­ronment tend to develop shared meanings. A goal of quali­tative research is thus to learn about those meanings through extensive interaction with people in their normal, everyday settings. Such interactions may be unstructured, as in studies where participant observation is the primary mode of data collection. The other common data collection method is that of unstructured or semi-structured interviewing. In either case, the research is directed towards the exploration of the phenomena under study from the perspective of the sub­jects, within the context of their normal environment (6-9).

Sam.ple selection. Ninety-three young women were re­cruited for the study through schools and community groups in Metropolitan Toronto. The research design defined three different subject groups: "core subjects" (n=16) were each interviewed three to six times, "peripheral subjects" (n=14) were interviewed once, and "discussion group subjects" (n=63) participated in small group discussions. The use of the three different groups allowed for identification of issues important to individual young women through in-depth interviews, and elaboration of those concerns with a wider variety of young women in the discussion groups. As is typical of qualitative research, purposive sampling tech­niques were used to recruit subjects with specific charac­teristics (7,9). For example, specific public schools were selected to ensure that the subjects represented a mix of socioeconomic settings.

In terms of subject characteristics, the core participants formed the most homogeneous group. All were Caucasians, 14 to 16 years of age. Four were second generation Cana­dians; families of the others had been in North America for several generations. Seven lived in a traditional nuclear family; five lived in female headed, single parent families; one was in a blended family; and three lived in extended family situations. Four came from households where both parents had university degrees and professional or manag­erial jobs; five had parents with a minimum of a high school diploma and white collar jobs; five came from working class homes where the parents had six to eleven years of school­ing; and two came from single-parent households supported by social assistance.

The peripheral participants were 14 to 17 years old. Three had been born outside Canada. The seven second-genera­tion Canadians were of Italian, Portuguese, and Polish heritage. Families of the remaining four participants had been in Canada for several generations. Two of the peri­pheral participants were from professional or managerial households, three were from white collar homes, eight were from working class families, and one lived with her unem­ployed mother.

Discussion group participants ranged from 11 to 18 years of age and although they were not asked for their ethnic heritage, the groups included a number of black and Asian participants, as well as Caucasians.

May. June 1993 109

No participants were known to be pregnant; all were in good health and fluent in English. Self-reported heights and weights were obtained from all core participants and nine peripheral participants. Body Mass Indices (BMI) of this group ranged from 17.5 to 25.8 kg/m2. When compared with baseline data from NHANESI (10), three participants had a BMI above the 85th percentile, the cutoff frequently used to indicate obesity. No participants were below the 15th percentile, suggesting that none were seriously under­weight.

Data collection. The primary method of data collection was in-depth individual interviews. All were conducted by the first author, who had received prior training in inter­viewing techniques. Initial interviews with core participants and all interviews with peripheral participants followed a semi-structured interview guide that included questions about usual eating patterns, food in social interactions, and concerns about dieting and weight control. Techniques to minimize the possibility of leading subjects' thoughts in­cluded starting each of these interviews with broad, open­ended questions that allowed the subjects to identifY issues of concern to them. The interviewer let the participants guide the conversation as much as possible, then followed up on the topics they raised. Guarding against the inadver­tent use of leading questions also involved the use of individualized guides for subsequent interviews with core participants. Each guide was prepared following the initial analysis of that participant's previous interviews and, there­fore, was based on issues of concern to her, not issues predefined by the researchers. Interviews ranged from 25 to 60 minutes in length. All were tape-recorded, and verbatim transcripts were prepared.

Group discussions were conducted by the first author after most of the individual interviews had been completed. Each of the eleven groups was made up of four to eight young women who were acquainted with each other. Each discussion lasted 30 to 45 minutes. Participants were again allowed to direct much of the conversation, but the discus­sions were focused on specific issues that had emerged from the individual interviews. All discussions were tape-re­corded and transcribed.

Within the interviews and discussions, techniques adapted from Spradley (6) were used to elicit the participants' food-related meaning systems. One strategy was to examine the data for ways in which participants spontaneously cate­gorized foods and to ask participants in later interviews direct questions about those categories. They were asked for examples of foods that should be included in each category and for characteristics of these foods. They were also asked if they could think of any other "kinds of foods." A second strategy was a card-sorting task that was com­pleted by nine core participants and members of one focus group. The task involved the use ofl00 three-by-four inch cards, on each of which was printed the name of a specific

110 Chapman and Maclean/JUNK FOOD AND HEALTHY FOOD

food, such as "skim milk" or "broccoli". The foods repre­sented a variety offood groups. Participants who completed the task were given 25 to 30 cards from the top of the shuffied deck and asked to sort the cards into groups, using whatever and however many groups they wished, as long as there were at least two different groups. After the sorting was completed, each group was named. Each participant repeated the task until she could not think of any new groupings .

All procedures used in the project were approved by the human subjects review committee of the University of Toronto.

Data analysis and interpretation. Analysis of the data was consistent with a grounded theory approach (11, 12), beginning with substantive coding of the transcripts as described by Glaser (11). Codes were embedded into the transcripts using The Ethnograph micro-computer program (13) , and memos were written describing the significant themes emerging from each transcript. Summary memos were written for each of the first nine core participants, identitying the major issues raised in each participant's interviews, and thematic reports were written to compare the issues across subjects. As these procedures were con­ducted while data were being collected, the process was an iterative one involving the writing of summaries; returning to earlier memos and transcripts to ensure that the reports reflected what was in the data; checking with old and new participants to verity the validity of the theme; writing another summary; and so on. By the time the data collection was complete, the major themes had been identified and described in some detail. All transcript segments dealing with specific themes were then consolidated and examined closely, along with intact transcripts and earlier summaries.

Establishment of adeqnacy of interpretation. Evalua- tion of the adequacy of interpretation of qualitative data involves establishing the credibility and transferability of the findings, just as criteria of reliability and validity are used to evaluate the adequacy of the findings of quantitarive studies (8). Techniques to enhance the credibility of quali­tative studies include prolonged, intensive contact with the field of study, use of multiple methods, and auditing inter­pretation by having selected participants and professional peers read drafts of study reports. To maximize transferabil­ity of the results, researchers must be explicit about how, under what conditions, and from whom data were col­lected, thus allowing others to assess the degree to which the findings might apply to other groups (8, 9).

A number of such checks on the adequacy of interpre­tation were built into this project. Purposive sampling techniques ensured that participants with a variety of char­acteristics contributed to the project (9). With the core participants, themes and issues raised in early interviews were checked and clarified in later interviews. The first nine

core participants were given copies of the summary reports written about them and asked to comment. Further auditing of the emerging themes occurred when specific issues were presented in the group discussions for comments and feed­back. The continual checking of developing ideas with the participants and constant cross-checking between original transcripts, memos, and reports adds to the credibility of the interpretation. As well, throughout the project, numerous transcripts and summaries were read by the second author to verity interpretations, and selected summaries and reports were reviewed by an advisory committee consisting of four experienced nutritional and social science researchers. All interviewing, transcribing, coding, and writing was con­ducted by the primary author, who was therefore well immersed in the data and aware of the context in which the participants' comments were made. Finally, the details of data collection procedures and subject characteristics pre­sented in this paper allow for an assessment of the transfer­ability of the findings to other settings.

RESULTS

The most prominent food classification scheme used by the study participants involved the dichotomization of foods as "junk food" or "healthy food." The scheme was evident in the frequent mention of "junk food," "unhealthy food," or "fattening food" used in contrast with "nutritious food ," "good food," or "healthy food". When food groupings were directly solicited from participants through the card sort task, the healthy food/ unhealthy food dichotomy again appeared. Five of the nine core participants who completed the task divided the foods into two groups, with "good," "healthy" and "nutritious" foods being juxtaposed with "bad," "junky," "not good," "not healthy" and "not nutri­tious" foods. The most consistent classification system used, however, was what the young women called "the food groups," based on the traditional Four Food Groups used by Canadian and American nutrition educators . Once again a distinction between healthy and unhealthy foods ap­peared. All eight of the participants who used this system identified at least five groups: the traditional four, and a fifth group called "extras," "others," or most frequently , "junk." Examination of the transcripts for other references to healthy and unhealthy foods also showed that foods classified as healthy were those seen as belonging in the Four Food Groups, while junk or unhealthy foods were those seen as not belonging. Chocolate and potato chips were the most commonly given examples of junk food, while fruits and vegetables were the most frequently cited examples of healthy foods.

The transcripts conveyed the participants' shared under­standing of the characteristics of each type of food, summa­rized in Table 1. The young women tended to offer vague statements with respect to junk foods, using phrases like

Journal of Nutrition Education Volume 25 Number 3

Table 1. Characteristics of junk food and healthy food.

Junk Food

Not good for you

High in one or more of:

sugar

fat

cholesterol

salt

calories

Contains

additives

preservatives

artificial ingredients

Doesn't do anything for you

Fattening

Causes pimples

Convenient

Tastes good

Affordable

Healthy Food

Good for you

Low in:

sugar

fat

cholesterol

salt

Lower in calories than junk food

Low in:

additives

preservatives

artificial ingredients

Natural

Contains:

vitamins

minerals

protein

Helps maintain weight

Helps maintain clear skin

"not healthy," "not too beneficial," and "you don't need them." They were generally in agreement that such foods contain a lot of fat, sugar, cholesterol, and/or calories. A few also men- tioned salt and additives. Statements about junk food being fattening or causing acne appear through­out the data. Many participants spoke of being unable to stay away from junk food, and of having cravings for it. Three reasons given for this were its good taste, its conven­ience, and its affordability.

The perceived characteristics of healthy food were in direct contrast those of junk food, with healthy foods being described as "good for you," and "high in nutritional value." Healthy food was seen as providing nutrients that the body needs and as not containing "bad" substances like fat, sugar, cholesterol, and preservatives. The young women also believed that by eating a "good diet," weight would be maintained and skin would be clear.

Junk foods and healthy foods were associated with dif­ferent situations and feelings, summarized in Table 2. Vir­tually all of the young women made statements about reducing their junk food intake and trying to eat only healthy foods in order to reduce or maintain weight. The examples they gave of how difficult it was to implement this routine illustrated how junk food was associated with pleasure, friends, being away from home, and indepen­dence, while eating healthy food was linked with family, meals, and being at home. Eating and liking junk food was seen as normal behavior for teenagers, while liking healthy food was noted as an oddity. One young woman said her friends think she is weird because she likes spinach, and

May. June 1993 111

another said people might call her a "really weird teenager" because she likes good, healthy food. Friends who do not eat very much junk food were noted as being self-controlled.

Despite the apparent expectation that all teenagers eat junk food, there were some unfavorable connotations asso­ciated with the behavior. Participants often felt it necessary to apologize or give excuses for the times they ate junk food. As well, a number of the young women spoke of feeling guilty or disgusted after they ate junk food.

Although the study participants tended to talk about healthy foods and junk foods as unambiguous dichotomous groups, the data contain some indications that the situation is not totally black and white. The young women expressed some ambivalence as to which group certain foods belonged in. One participant gave ice cream as an example of junk food but said that it does have some nutritional value so "it depends on how much you use it." The most frequent example of a food that was not clearly healthy or unhealthy was the hamburger, mainly because the participants saw distinct differences between a home-cooked burger (con­sidered to be a healthy food) and one purchased from a fast food outlet (considered to be a junk food).

The participants' ambivalence about the healthy or un­healthy nature of some foods reinforces many of the char­acteristics and associations listed in Tables 1 and 2. Foods containing characteristics of both groups (for example, are high in both fat and vitamins, minerals or protein) were hard to classifY. In the end, many participants decided that those made by Mom at home are healthy, while those purchased away from home and eaten with friends are not.

The difficulty of using only two food categories, "healthy" and "junk", to characterize all foods was also noted by participants in discussion groups that were pre­sented with such a system. A number suggested that there should be a third group of "in-between" foods like ham-

Table 2. Situations and feelings associated with eating junk food

and healthy food.

Junk Food Healthy Food

Gaining weight/Going off diet LOSing weight/dieting

Enjoyment, Pleasure, Parties Being concerned with weight

and appearance

Snacks Meals

Being with friends Being with parents

Being away from parents/home Staying home

Being at the mali or store

Having money

Doing whatever you want

Normal

Not being in control

Overeating, Pigging out, Guilt,

Disgust

Weird

Self·control

112 Chapman and Maclean/JUNK FOOD AND HEALTHY FOOD

burgers and French fries. The participants had no problems, however, with the use of the terms "junk food" or "un­healthy food" to describe chocolate, chips, candy and pop, or "healthy foods" to describe fruits, vegetable, chicken, fish, bread and low fat milk. They were also in general agreement with the characteristics and associations listed in Tables 1 and 2.

In summary, a dichotomous junk food/healthy food classification system appears to be an integral part of the cultural meaning system that young women use to interpret and rationalize their food-related experiences. Although the distinction between junk foods and healthy foods was not absolute, the terms were familiar to everyone, and there was consensus as to the core foods and their key characteristics within each group. An analysis of when and where partici­pants ate junk foods and healthy foods and how they felt about eating each showed consistent patterns.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

Cultural definitions of the values and meanings associated with foods are key factors shaping human eating patterns (4). Examination of qualitative interviews with adolescent women in Toronto has revealed that the predominant food-related meaning system in that culture involved the dichotomization of foods as either "healthy" or "junk". Although these terms have not been reported elsewhere as components of a cultural meaning system, they have ap­peared in the literature dealing with young women's food habits. Updegrove and Achterberg (14) found that "healthy food" was a meaningful concept for adolescent female runners but not for their male teammates. Teenagers in another study (15) described junk foods much as they were described by participants in the present study, characterizing them as high in sugar, fat, energy and additives, fattening, and bad for health.

The conflict the young women in this study felt between whether to eat junk food or healthy food can be seen as symbolizing the conflicts teens feel between maintaining family relationships and gaining autonomy as an adult. The segregation of junk foods and healthy foods mirrors and symbolizes the developmental challenges facing adolescent women as they rework social relationships within their families and with their peer group and as they attempt to sort out issues of autonomy and intimacy (16). The findings of this study show that junk foods are associated with friends, being away from home, independence, and parental disapproval, while healthy foods are closely associated with family and home. As a consequence, eating junk foods becomes a way for teens to demonstrate an increasing independence from their family and a growing loyalty to their peer group. On the other hand, the family remains very important to most teenagers, and eating family food is one way to exhibit the maintenance of family ties.

The perceived relationship between weight gam and eatingjunk food and the current societal pressure on women to be thin poses a dilemma for young women. These study participants, like others, believed they must be thin in order to conform to society's ideals and to be attractive to men (17). Conforming to peer group expectations and developing intimate relationships are important goals for teenagers, and maintaining a slim figure is seen as contributing to both goals. The study participants believed that a slim figure is achieved by eating healthy foods and avoiding junk foods. This left the young women faced with the choice of eating junk food to demonstrate independence from their family and adherence to their peer group, or eating healthy food to demonstrate maintenance of family ties and to achieve the slim body required for acceptance by society, their peer group, and men. Thus, it appears that the interweaving of cultural understandings of food, the developmental chal­lenges of adolescence, and social expectations of women created a situation for the young women participating in this study that made it difficult for them to follow nutritional guidelines.

Because of the small sample used in this study and the lack of random sampling techniques, it is important to realize that these findings cannot be generalized to the adolescent female population as a whole. The applicability of the findings to other groups of adolescent women de­pends on the degree to which they share a common culture with the study participants. Given the diffusion of a com­mon culture through various mass media, it is likely that the centrality of concepts of junk food and healthy food extends beyond the Toronto sample to many groups of young women in North America. Since this meaning system may be mediated by ethnic or socioeconomic factors, further study of subgroups with different ethnic and socioeconomic characteristics from those described for this sample would add to our knowledge.

Understanding the cultural meaning system framing young women's food habits and recognizing the interaction between this system and other contextual issues should help nutrition educators in assessing the food problems of young women and in developing programs to alleviate those prob­lems. Nutrition education programs need to acknowledge the fact that the consumption of "junk" foods is one way for teenagers to act out their growing independence from their family and their allegiance to a peer group. Viewed in this light, the consumption of junk food can be seen as having a positive effect on psychosocial well-being. This effect may be undermined, however, by beliefs that all "fun" foods, foods purchased away from home, and con­venience foods are fattening, unhealthful, and inappropriate. Nutritionists might want to consider ways of acknow­ledging the positive aspects offoods that contribute to teens' social maturation at the same time that they are communi­cating principles of good nutrition by explicitly recognizing that some "junk" foods can be an appropriate part of the

Journal of Nutrition Education Volume 25 Number 3

diet of an active teenager. Such a recognition of the balanc­

ing act teens face daily in their lives may help to relieve the

tension that many young women feel towards food.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

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409-415,1991.

2. Boulton, T.].C. Patterns of food intake in childhood and adolescence

and risk of later disease. Australia and New Zealand Journal of Medicine

15:478-488, 1985.

3. Bull, N.L. Studies of the dietary habits, food consumption and nutrient

intakes of adolescents and young adults. World Review of Nutrition and

Dietetics 57:24-74,1988.

4. Parraga, I.M. Determinants of food consumption. Journal of the Ameri­

can Dietetic Association 90:661-663, 1990.

5. Murcott, A. Sociological and social anthropological approaches to

food and eating. World Review of Nutrition and Dietetics 55: 1-40, 1988.

6. Spradley, J.P. The ethnographic interview. New York: Holt, Rinehart,

and Winston, 1979.

7. Chapman, G. and H. Maclean. Qualitative research in home econom­

ics. Canadian Home Economics Journal 45:105-111, 1990.

8. Lincoln, Y.S. and E.G. Guba. But is it rigorous? Trustworthiness and

authenticity in naturalistic evaluation. In: Naturalistic evaluation, D.D.

Williams, ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1986, pp. 73-84.

9. Achterberg, C. Qualitative methods in nutrition education evaluation

research. Journal of Nutrition Education 20:244-250, 1988.

10. Must, A., G.E. Dallal, and W.H. Dietz. Reference data for obesity:

85th and 95th percentiles of body mass index (wt/ht2) and triceps

skinfold thickness. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 53:839-846,

1991.

11. Glaser, B.G. Theoretical sensitivity. Mill Valley, CA: The Sociology

Press, 1978.

12. Glaser, B. and A. Strauss. The discovery of grounded theory. Mill Valley,

CA: Sociology Press, 1967.

13. Seidel, J.B., R. Kjolseth and E. Seymour. The ethnograph: A program

for the computer assisted analysis of text based data. (Version 3.0). Littleton,

CO: Qualis Research Associates, 1988.

14. Updegrove, N.A. and C.L. Achterberg. The conceptual relationship

between training and eating in high school distance runners. Journal of

Nutrition Education 23: 18-24, 1990.

15. Story, M. and M.D. Resnick. Adolescents' views on food and nutri­

tion. Journal of Nutrition Education 18: 188-192, 1986.

16. Orr, D.P. and G.M. Ingersoll. Adolescent development: A biopsy­

chosocial review. Current Problems in Pediatrics 18:441-499, 1988.

17. Chapman, G .E. Perspectives on adolescent women and food. Unpublished

Ph.D. Thesis, University of Toronto, 1992.

May. June 1993 113

RESUME Un projet de recherche qualitative a ete mene pour examiner Ia signification des aliments chez Ies adolescen­tes, en etudiant comment celles-ci Ies classent et Ies utilisent. Quatre-vingt-treize jeunes femmes, agees de 11 a 18 ans, ont participe a des entrevues personnelles semi-structurees ou a des discussions par petits groupes, au cours desquelles elles ont echange leurs vues sur ce qu'elles mangeaient, OU elles mangeaient et avec qui. Le principal schema de classification qui a emerge de l' analyse des donnees a ete Ia dichotomisation des aliments en deux groupes: Ies aliments sains et Ies aliments sans valeur nutritive. Les participantes a I'etude se sont mises d'accord sur les aliments essentiels et sur Ies caract€:ristiques communes des aliments dans chaque groupe. Elles ont associe Ia consommation des aliments sans valeur nutritive avec en particulier Ia prise de poids, Ie plaisir, les amis, 1'independance et la culpabilite, alors que Ia consommation des aliments sains a ete associee avec perte de poids, parents et presence a la maison. Par ces associations, Ie systeme de signification des aliments s'apparente aux problemes de 1'adolescence, comme Ia maturation des relations avec famille et amis ou encore les pressions sociales exercees sur les femmes et pr6nant la minceur. L'appreciation des significations donnees aux dif­f€:rents aliments par des adolescentes ainsi que les liens entre ces significations et les problemes developpementaux et soci­aux peuvent aider les educateurs en nutrition a concevoir des programmes d'intervention correspondant a ce groupe d'age.

RESUMEN Se llevo a cabo un proyecto de investigacion cualitativo para examinar los significados de los alimentos dentro de la cultura de las adolescentes, examinando como elIas clasifican y usan los alimentos. Noventa y tres jovencitas adolescentes entre los 11 y 18 anos de edad participaron en entrevistas individuales semiestructuradas 0 en discusiones de grupos pequenos en los cuales se converso sobre 10 que comian, donde y con quien comian. El principal esquema de clasifica­cion de alimentos que surgio a partir del analisis de los datos obtenidos fue la division de los alimentos en dos grupos: "alimentos nutritivos" y "alimentos sin valor nutritivo". Las estudiantes que participaron en el estudio concordaron en los alimentos basicos y en las caracteristicas comunes de los ali­mentos de cada grupo. Asociaron el consumo de alimentos sin valor nutritivo con, entre otras cosas, aumento de peso, placer, amigos, independencia y culpa, en cambio el consumo de alimentos nutritivos 10 asociaron con la perdida de peso, los padres y con la perman en cia en el hogar. A traves de estas asociaciones, el sistema del significado de la alimentacion se relaciona con los problemas de desarrollo de los adolescentes, tales como la madurez de las relaciones con la familia y amigos y las presiones sociales en la mujer de ser delgada. La apre­ciacion de los significados dados a los diferentes alimentos dentro de la cultura de las jovenes adolescentes y la conexion entre estos significados y los problemas sociales y de desarrollo pueden ayudar a los educadores de la nutricion a disenar programas de intervencion para este grupo de edad.